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The signage surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris in Jacksonville, Florida, last week wasn’t exactly subtle: “Reproductive Freedom” and “Confidence Women” framed the only woman ever to come within a whisker of the presidency, while she willing Blame it on Florida ban on abortion after six weeks at the feet of former President Donald Trump, on the same day it came into effect. For the sake of political staging, it was so perfect as anyone could have planned.
“Donald Trump is the architect,” Harris said on May 1, condemning the “4 million women” who wake up that morning with fewer reproductive rights. “He brag about this.”
From a political perspective, Harris is not wrong. Trump nominated three of the US Supreme Court justices who ended the Roe v. possible, which in turn allowed Florida lawmakers to ban abortions in the state after six weeks. And five of the seven Florida court judges who allowed the new law to come into force were named by Governor Ron DeSantis, who came to power with Trump’s blessing.
For the Biden campaign, the list of swing states is longer than the seven that have so far attracted the most attention. Smoldering Florida, where Republicans hold every statewide office, has the potential to be an attractive eighth option. Hence: Harris’s visit last week, Biden’s a week beforeand a handful of new campaign hires to run the state on a day-to-day basis.
Florida’s overreach on reproductive rights may indeed put it in play this cycle, but the Sunshine State remains Trump’s underdog. It is much more likely that we now have an unexpectedly competitive race between Republican Senator Rick Scott and his Democratic opponent, former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
It’s a race that most strategists had relegated to the second tier until very recently. Along with the motivating power of Florida’s six-week ban and a November ballot measure that will give voters the chance to undo it, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin decision Relinquishing a re-election bid in West Virginia freed up valuable resources – not just from the Democratic Party’s official Senate campaign arm, but also from abortion rights groups who, to this point, have been undefeated when the question of access comes up. directly to voters.
While the White House race dominates in Florida in terms of enthusiasm, the Senate race could have greater consequences in the coming years. Biden may not need Florida if he can hold his ground or even advance to North Carolina. Still, Democrats need to win at least one seat held by Republicans if they have any chance of maintaining control of the Senate. Frankly, West Virginia disappeared for a generation due to Manchin’s retirement. This leaves the party with just two pickup options – Florida and Texas, and the latter is currently only marginally One less impossible dream. And all of this assumes that Democrats can even hold their seats in places like Montana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In other words, Democrats need every opportunity they can get, which is why Mucarsel-Powell is the silent rock star the party is trying to promote without marking her as a right-wing target.
“What I think is happening is they are seeing the change on the ground and the change in Florida,” Mucarsel-Powell told TIME during a visit to our Washington office.
To be clear, Scott remains the favorite. The few nonpartisan polls in the state Show he with a double-digit lead. And although he is not exactly adored by his voters, he has managed to achieve victory after victory over more than a decade. He is Never won any of his general election races by more than two percentage points. (Usually less, and once via recount.) This is the first time he will be on the ballot when he is not at the top of the ticket; that crown this year belongs to Trump, and it is unknown how the former president will dictate or derail news coverage over the next six months.
And Scott’s time in Washington was far from smooth. At the beginning of 2022, he released a campaign strategy memo that drew open contempt from some members and the ire of Senate leadership, specifically his call to end popular social programs like Social Security and Medicare. (He has since recoiled.) He tried and failed to remove Senate leader Mitch McConnell after the 2022 elections, for which he served as head of the Republican Party’s Senate campaign arm.
Read more: The least popular man in Washington
In a warning shot against Mucarsel-Powell, Scott was spending about $700,000 a week on ads to promote his reelection, including one that emphasizes his opposition to socialism — normally a winning message in immigrant-heavy Florida, but one that even some Republicans fear may have lost influence when he ran against Mucarsel-Powell, whose family fled socialist Ecuador when he was a child. Mucarsel-Powell responded with an ad in Spanish that says “it’s freedom that Rick Scott wants to take away.”
Scott may be the candidate his critics see him as, but he knows the terrain and is a disciplined technocrat who will outperform his rivals. When I went to Florida in 2018, hoping to dump him, I couldn’t help but admire his work as I watched him struggle at boring round tables and steamy town halls at shift changes. Seeking to learn Spanish, he hired native-speaking personal assistants to practice with him between events – an incentive at first glance, but one that gave him enough proficiency to show that he was trying to understand his constituents.
It’s clear that his vast personal wealth gives him a huge advantage over his rivals. In his first campaign for governor, he spent $70 million of his own money to get to Tallahassee. His second campaign cost him nearly $13 million. And his Senate run six years ago cost him more than $50 million.
Mucarsel-Powell has technically surpassed Scott, raising more than $7 million so far. Although Scott reported $7.7 million in his campaign filings, about $7 million is a loan from his checking account, and he has a personal fortune estimated at a quarter of a billion dollars at his disposal.
However, Mucarsel-Powell is about to see a significant boost now that the courts have cleared the way for Florida citizens to be asked to preserve their right to abortion this fall. Outside groups are readying a ton of money to swing the vote to victory. Polls show Florida in the same position in supporting abortion rights as Ohio and Kansas, both red states that surprised experts when they supported abortion rights ballot questions.
But here’s the catch: Democrats and allies will need 60% of voters to approve the ballot measure, a bar that supporters approved in California and Vermont but which would have been fatal in Ohio, where voters supported the constitutional right to abortion with 57% support. . And the text of Florida’s ballot measure is complicated and could be more difficult for voters to parse.
But Mucarsel-Powell only needs 50% plus one vote to win the seat, a goal the ballot measure could help her reach, even if it falls short of its higher threshold.
Scott’s team has covered all aspects when it comes to abortion access in Florida. Although he said he would have preferred a 15-week ban, he nevertheless supported the six-week ban and said he would have signed it if he were still governor. (Florida Republicans are quick to note that, unlike blanket bans in other Southern states, Florida allows abortions after six weeks in cases involving rape, incest, fetal abnormalities or when a pregnant person’s life is at risk. )
“Everyone knows that Senator Rick Scott supports the right to life. Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell does not,” says Chris Hartline, senior adviser to Scott’s campaign. “Florida residents agree that there should be some reasonable limits on abortion. Senator Scott was very clear about his position: no national bans, with consensus at 15 weeks with limitations on rape, incest and life of the mother. Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell takes an extreme view, opposing any commonsense limits on abortion.”
Despite murmurs of optimism on the Democratic side, Scott’s supporters argue that Democrats are overreacting. The strongest evidence: that of Florida voter lists they no longer reflect a swing state, with registered Republicans boasting a 900,000-vote advantage, compared to a 100,000-vote deficit four years ago.
“What Florida Democrats call newfound confidence, anyone with a brain calls delusion,” Hartline tells TIME. “Republicans will win at the polls in Florida because we invest time and effort into registering voters and focusing on the issues that matter most to Florida families.
As recent elections have demonstrated, support for abortion rights is bipartisan. Of the approximately 1.3 million signatures subject in the first round of ballot measure requests, about 150,000 of these Hancocks were registered Republicans.
“I’ve been saying this for a long time because I’ve lived in Florida for a long time: Florida is a very independent state. It’s a purple state. It’s a third party, a third party, a third party,” Mucarsel-Powell told TIME.
That’s why Democrats are silently applauding Murcasel-Powell, without many heralds. Florida is extremely expensive and the climb is very, very steep – no matter what the polls say, about 62% support for abortion in some or all cases.
Still, the fact that Florida is in the conversation as a contending state in 2024 is impressive. It is a sign of how much the Republican exaggeration on abortion rights has made the scenario much more tense for their candidates. Democrats may have a fighting chance in Florida, even with a former one-term House member. They are engaging relatively late and at a clear monetary disadvantage, given that the Republican holder is the more rich man in the Senate.
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